Sunday, May 03, 2009

Vietnamese Caramelized Pork

I rarely cook with pork as Carlos is not a fan of it but I will cook them occasionally if I get a chance to buy the pork from Chinatown. In Vietnam they will normally use fatty pork or pork ribs for this dish but I just used the lean pork I have in my freezer. This dish has a lovely sweet and savory taste that is highly addictive. You can use chicken meat for this dish too.

1. Marinate the pork with fish sauce and black pepper and set it aside for an hour.
2. Heat up about 2-3 tbsp of oil in a pan on medium high and add in the sugar. Stir from time to time and make sure the sugar does not burn. When the sugar starts to turns into a darker brown color, remove the pan from heat and add in the ginger and garlic and stir-fry for a few second.
3. Place the pan back on heat and add in the slices pork. Let the pork cook for about 1 minute and turn them around to cook the other side. The meat will have a dark golden color from the caramel.
4. The meat will discharge some juice and create a sauce with the caramel. Once that stage is reached, cover the pan and let the pork/sauce mixture simmer for about 20 minutes.
5. If the sauce dry up too fast, add about 1/4 cup of water to it and continue to simmer until the sauce thicken and the pork should dry up and caramelized. If that's not the case, increase the heat until the sauce dry up.
6. Check seasoning and add in green chilies. Serve with warm rice.

This looks yummy & something my hubby & kids will surely love to have for dinner. Thanks for sharing, will see if I can try it out this week / next. Will blog how it turns out, keke! Not sure if it'll look as appetising as yours does ;)

Thks for sharing this recipe, gert! My kids and i enjoyed this simple but yummy dish. Here is a pic of my vietnamese caramelised pork - http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii13/sspaks64/vietnamesecaramelisedpork.jpg

I made this last night using boneless pork loin chops that I flattened slightly with my palm and then sliced. Added a relatively spicy, sliced Anaheim chile (usually mild but not in this case) which worked well for my husband's taste. Have been taught to never put oil in a cold pan(All Clad), warm first, then add oil. A mistake for this recipe, I think I heated the pan too long, since my caramel immediately broke. To the separated, very deep golden broken sauce, I added the ginger and garlic hoping that would help, to no avail. I thought, "Now what?!" Thank goodness for the Internet, googled it, and easily found a one-minute video demonstrating how easy it is to fix a broken sauce just by gradually adding a bit of water, whisking all the while. The sauce came back together and I was able to proceed as the recipe instructs! The only change I made was to cook the pork for only half the time noted. It was quite well done but still juicy. Not surprisingly, after adding quite a bit of water to bring the sauce back together, I had to remove the pork to a platter and reduce the sauce for just a few minutes. Excellent result overall, delicious and easy, I will make this again and hopefully without the sauce breaking next time! Thank you for posting!

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About Me

I was born and raised in Malaysia and now live in Northern California, USA with my wonderful husband Carlos. I love to bake and cook. It is very relaxing and I find my creativity flowing in the kitchen. I creates this blog to record all my cooking and baking adventures and also share my tested recipes with you.
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